


I picked those cherries, just for you.

by Antarc



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Relationship, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25736545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antarc/pseuds/Antarc
Summary: They’re both so tired, after Starcourt.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 10
Kudos: 119





	I picked those cherries, just for you.

They’re both so tired, after Starcourt. Steve, with his hearing shot in his left ear and the concussion of a lifetime, spends a week on the same closed-off hospital floor as Billy, whose torso and hands are littered with stab wounds. According to the doctors, he tells Steve, he’s incredibly lucky that his internal organs aren’t mush. He’s hopped up on painkillers, lying in a room all by himself, pale face against pale sheets. It’s like all the color, from his golden tan, sparking eyes to the freckles on his face, has been washed out.

So Steve, still dizzy and disoriented, still flinching every time a doctor approaches him with a needle or when he thinks he hears movement of something that isn’t there on what is now his ‘bad’ side, sneaks into Billy’s room. All the time. Just to be around someone who looks like he needs company at least as much as Steve does. 

It’s not even like they talk much during that week. Billy is too exhausted to keep his eyes open a lot of the time and Steve just can’t stand the silence in his own room, where he’ll end up curled up against the wall, his eyes constantly keeping track of the door. Still, there’s snatches of conversations. Steve jokes to Billy about one of the doctors sounding like a muppet and watches a tiny smile crinkle his eyes. There’s a TV in the room and while MTV plays on screen, Billy complains how he wasn’t able to go to the Metallica concert in Indianapolis in January. How he won’t miss their next tour, no matter what trouble it might get him into with his dad.

They tease each other about their taste in music. Their shitty grades. Their stupid summer job uniforms (“I look good in those shorts,” Billy grumbles. “I just hate having to wear the same clothes as those preppy losers.”). They also blatantly avoid mentioning what happened to them or where they are. 

When Steve finally steps out of the hospital, he still feels shaky and unmoored. Hawkins is in the middle of a media frenzy, its center a constant barrage of reminders of what happened. Or at least what people think happened. It’s too much to handle, but so is the rigid silence of his home.

His beemer survived Starcourt. Sat right there in the parking lot, unbothered by the mayhem that happened at the mall. Steve finds the set of spare keys in his desk drawer. He’s probably not fit to drive yet, but he can’t ask his parents to drive him to doctors appointments when it’s a shot in the dark whether they’ll be home on time. And he can’t stand to hide away at home for too long. 

Somehow, it’s still summer when he steps outside. Summer feels like a lifetime ago, when he gets into his car and drives out of Hawkins, through luscious green forest and corn and wheat fields. It makes him think of Billy, still in that sterile white hospital room. How Billy belongs into this blistering summer heat, window cranked all the way down, wind cooling the sweat at the back of his neck. It’s still the middle of July and so Steve spots a clearly hand-drawn sign at the side of the road, directing towards a farm offering self picking. He’s seen ones like it his entire life on his drives, barely pays them any mind most of the time. But his attention is caught, almost against his will. 

There’s an abandoned grocery bag on his backseat and cash in his wallet, so who is he to ignore this sudden stroke of fate?

When he returns from the farm that afternoon, an additional box the farmer gave to him sits next to him, with some of the sweetest, glowing red cherries he’s ever tasted. They stain his fingers blood red when he takes their pits from his mouth.

***

Billy can’t decide what he hates more: Being possessed by an otherworldly monster from hell, getting stabbed in multiple places by said monster or the mind numbing, lonely, painful recovery afterwards. It all blends together after a while, into this amalgamation of the nightmare of what it did with his body and the nightmare of what has happened to his body.

Still, there’s those brief snatches of time when he gets to talk to Harrington. Gets to open his mouth and let words come out that are his. Thoughts about the past. About the future. Despite everything, he’s still here. Even if life still sucks, he still gets to live it, goddamn it. 

It’s still tough, when Steve comes over to tell him he’s being released from the hospital. The guy is still bruised, an echo of how he looked last year after Billy beat him up. He’s still better off than Billy, who the doctors tentatively have told that he might be able to go home in a couple of weeks. 

So there he is, in a hospital bed in the middle of summer, going a bit out of his mind with boredom. With nothing but his own thoughts to entertain himself, it’s way too easy to get mad at himself for finally getting Steve Harrington’s attention after months of messing up. He’s even more mad at himself for how much the disappointment hits him once Steve is gone. As if those short conversations they’ve had while Billy was lucid enough to form words are going to wipe away the big fat nothing that came before.

Outside, the world continues to glow in sweltering summer sun. His body feels like it’s nothing but a slowly-healing wound and he’s still so goddamn tired, while at the same time he wants nothing more than to shed off his blanket and run outside. Some days, it’s pure agony.

The knock on his door a week after Steve has left comes unexpected. Max has finally been allowed to visit and dropped off some of Billy’s things, but he doesn’t expect her or, god forbid, Neil to come over anytime soon. Instead, a familiar mop of hair peeks inside, followed by a sunburnt face and an awkward smile.

“Jesus, have you never heard of sunscreen?” Billy can’t help but laugh a little, even if it tugs at his stitches. It’s better than the pathetic ‘You’re back!’ he almost blurted out and has the additional benefit of making Steve pout. When he steps up to Billy’s bed, he’s obviously hiding something behind his back: Arms conspicuously held behind him, body angled so Billy can’t see around him. “Hey now, I think it blends in well with the bruising.” Steve grins back.

It’s only when he comes close enough to sit down on the chair right next to Billy’s bed- the one he spent a good chunk of a week sitting on while he kept him company- that he puts a lumpy cloth bag on his lap. Looks down, like he’s hesitating to show what he’s brought. Even the tips of his ears are rosy-pink, like he spent all day outside without having planned on it. Billy honestly doesn’t care if what he’s brought are a bunch of potatoes he wants to turn into stencils, as long as he stays a bit longer.

Instead, Steve reaches with a mumbled “These might be hard to eat just yet, but I saw them and had to pick them for you” inside his bag and holds out two handfuls of immaculate, deep red cherries to Billy. Piles them on his lap on top of his blanket, before he can reach out. It’s a shock of color and smell. Next, there’s two peaches. Pink and yellow, covered in soft fuzz. And after that, a couple of dark, shiny plums. 

Hesitantly, he reaches for a cherry. Puts it in his mouth. His teeth pop through its skin and there’s an explosion of dizzying sweetness on his tongue. He can’t take his eyes off of Steve, whose expression is so open and hopeful.

Fruits lie in Billy’s lap, but it feels more like this boy with sunburnt skin and the biggest, softest eyes, has brought him a small pile of diamonds.

**Author's Note:**

> Please be so kind and leave a comment/kudos, if you liked it 💗


End file.
